


Hearts of Gold

by Liara_90



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Beaches, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Memories, One Shot, POV Third Person, Possibly Unrequited Love, Travel, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, not a shipping fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Team SSSN (plus RWBY) visit Gold Beach, one of the sites of the D-Day landings. It brings up more than it's fair share of family history. And with Sun now dating Ruby, Neptune is left wondering about the future of his team.</p><p>Neptune-centric fic, with significant input from Scarlet. Written based on a prompt for the August MonCon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> My second entry into the r/rwby [MonCon](https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/4vt6nr/official_rrwby_moncon_august_2016/), this time with the theme of Team SSSN + Beach. So two things I have zero experience with. Here goes a whole lotta nothin'...

It was only when Neptune's head impacted the window with a dull _thud_ that he began to suspect that his coffee might have been decaf.

With a muffled _groan_ , Neptune pried his face off the glass, ignoring the stifled snickers of his companions. Rubbing his cheeks in an attempt to flush the fatigue from his body, Neptune glanced at the dashboard at the front of the van. _06:21_. He suppressed a follow-up groan, if only barely. They'd been driving for almost two hours and everything still looked like... _this_.

The view from his window hadn't improved since he'd dozed off. Run-down buildings. Dreary streets. Overcast skies. Much like his mood, early-morning Normandy so far appeared to be tired, depressed, and dark.

< _Honk!_ >

" _Ow lun dun jhew hai_!"

That _did_ snap Neptune awake, adrenaline coursing through his veins as the van slammed to a halt, the sound of tires screeching against pavement ringing in his ears.

Sun was already halfway out of the van, his entire torso extending through his window as he let loose with a tirade of his most indignant Cantonese. " _Lay da yuen fay gay mm sai sou_!" The fact that a septuagenarian couple in rural France wouldn't quite understand him was irrelevant. They certainly got the gist. "There are like two cars on the goddamn road how can you miss them!" Sun continued, switching to English. "You're going to get us all killed because you can't take two fucking seconds to check for incoming traffic! The baguettes can _wait_!"

" _Sun_!" a half-pleading, half-laughing voice cried out, and a pair of slender arms wrapped around his torso. Sun's multilingual tirade was cut short as Ruby Rose forcibly yanked him back within the confines of the van, the older boy landing unceremoniously in her lap. "Don't make a scene!"

Her words were chastisements, but she was unable to entirely suppress the giggles her boyfriend's antics elicited. Neptune couldn't understand the words Ruby then murmured in Sun's ear, but before long both were grinning like idiots, a flurry of kisses the punctuation of the lovers' discourse.

Neptune rather pointedly averted his gaze.

"Jesus H. Christ, what the _hell_ was that?" Glancing over his shoulder, Neptune caught a glimpse of his best friend's girlfriend's half-sister, who was now wrestling with a seatbelt that had automatically locked around her. Cascading blonde hair seemed to drape her like an unruly mop, and the adrenaline-fuelled shock of being awoken by a near-collision had done nothing for her mood.

"Are you _trying_ to get us all killed?!" Nor her girlfriend's apparently. Seated beside her, Weiss Schnee was a portrait of astonished fury. " _Qu'est-il arrivé, Sage_?"

"Two old people got in front of me, what is it that you want me to do?" demanded Sage, responding in Arabic-accented English. With two years of age on the rest of the group ( _four_ on Ruby) Sage had insisted on driving. Not to mention that he was the only one who was actually _from_ France, even if he'd never been this far north. He and Weiss were also the sole Francophones of the group, although the French Sage had learned in the Parisian _banlieues_ and what Weiss had been taught from classicists in a New England boarding school were practically different dialects.

Having no pre-planned retort Weiss was forced to sulk in her seat, brushing a few errant strands of snow-white hair out of her face as she did.

Yang's hand found Weiss', and their heartbeats calmed in unison. Calloused hands over a pianist's fingers. There was no reason it should have worked, not in Neptune's mind, but love was made of strange stuff indeed. Three years together at the same boarding school and Weiss and Neptune had done little more than kiss; only belatedly realizing that they were both playing for the wrong teams. Then Yang had entered Weiss' world like a tornado, sweeping her off her feet in a whirlwind of passion and humor and _love_ that Weiss had never in her life experienced.

It was petty to resent someone for being lucky enough to find love. Neptune tried very hard not to.

"How the hell is Blake still asleep?" asked Sun, managing to twist away from his girlfriend long enough to peer into the back of the van, where the English lit-major still dozed contentedly.

"I told you," retorted Yang, "it's before noon on a weekend. Blake _will_ be sleeping."

"Huh." Sun's syllable was left to hang in the air for a few moments, before Ruby regained her monopoly on his attention. Even sharing a single seat of an already-cramped van, Ruby had found a way to enjoy the perks of her new boyfriend. Or perhaps the close quarters made things all that much easier...

Yang let out a bemused snort at her sister's antics and sunk back in her seat, arms folded across her chest, eyes drifting shut. Neptune shook his head. Yang Xiao Long took her protectiveness of her little sis like a religious vow, had long dissuaded suitors she considered sub-par (and a rather inclusive definition _that_ was) with a combination of words and 'more than words'. Ruby _certainly_ never had to worry about any more overly-aggressive romantics after the first 'accident'. When Sun had made his move on the younger woman Neptune was _positive_ that the cannons of Fort Yang would blow his little ship to pieces.

' _Better lucky than good_ '' probably wasn't the Wukong family motto, but it damn well _should_ have been. Because Sun, it seemed, was the only human with a y chromosome whom Yang entrusted with her sister. What black magic Sun had performed to win over the Yellow Dragon remained an enigma to everyone, but by hook or crook his roommate had managed it. One trip to the campus pub for 'vetting purposes' and Yang readily declared him 'a pretty cool dude', which coming from her was practically a panegyric. Now they played beach volleyball on weekends and spotted each other in the weight room.

Not even Sun's dating history with Blake had been enough to faze _either_ sister...

"Well," declared Sage, as the van rolled to a halt. "We are here."

It took them the better part of two minutes to stumble out, gathering up bags and hats and other assorted possessions in a van with little room to maneuver. "I was promised a beach," grumbled Blake, as she disembarked the van and took in her surroundings, wrapping her coat closer around her. A cold wind off the English Channel nipped at exposed skin, the spray of the sea like icy spittle. "What the hell are we doing here?"

"Same."

"I concur."

Yang and Weiss spoke at the same time, smiles flickering across their faces at the symmetry of their words and thoughts. 

"You guys!" Ruby was atop the van before anyone had a chance to blink, staring out at the horizon like a cavalry officer of old. "Not only is this _a_ beach, this is one of the coolest beaches in the world! _Gold_! The literal center of the Normandy landings! _And_ more importantly, the sight where grandpa Rufus Rose began the liberation of Europe from the yoke of Hun tyranny!"

"It is _far_ too early in the morning for this," groaned Weiss.

"You're just annoyed because great-grandpappy Schnee was on the _other_ side of the beachhead," insinuated Blake, a wordless glare her only reply.

"Over _there_ are the cliffs of Longues where 155-mm shells _rained_ down on the arriving Brits! _That's_ where the LCTs got stuck on German defenses! _Those_ houses are right where the 1 st Battalion of the Wehrmacht's 352nd Division were sleeping!"

"Easy, Ruby, you're drifting dangerously close to Professor Oobleck levels of rambling," teased Yang, eliciting an extended tongue from her sibling. Ruby hopped off the van with melodramatic flourish, flush with enough energy to kill a lesser mortal.

"How can you not be excited?" demanded Ruby, sweeping her arms across the near-featureless beach barely illuminated by the cloud-concealed sun. "This is our family history! All the stories about Grandpa Rufus _literally_ saving the world! And we're the first in generations to actually make it back here." Ruby paused. "Seriously, Scarlet, this was an _awesome_ idea!"

The words were out of her mouth a moment too fast to stop them, to rearrange them into a more diplomatic phrasing. Scarlet smiled softly at Ruby, politely ignoring the grimaces creasing everyone's faces.

Scarlet had family history here, too, they all knew, though without the same triumphant outcome. Peter David, 231st Infantry Brigade, had been one of the hundreds killed in the day's fighting, leaving a heavily-pregnant wife in Berkshire to raise a child alone. It wasn't exactly an open wound, but the remnants of an ancestral tragedy still hung in the air, still clung to the sand and the rocks and the sea.

They took that moment to dissipate, the uneasy silence dispersing them as effectively as tear gas. Blake, Weiss and Yang slipped back to the van, scrounging about for more bags and backpacks. Sage re-hydrated with a bottle of Perrier. Ruby wrapped her arms around Sun's, babbling to her boyfriend in a near-unintelligible mix of Cantonese and English in her excitement.

Neptune watched them go, an uneasy feeling continuing to gestate in his stomach. 

_Jealousy_ was a strong word, and not necessarily the wrong one. He could already feel the camaraderie they'd accumulated disintegrating, bonds stretching and loosening with each passing day...

It was inevitable, to some degree, Neptune could admit to himself that much. Four strangers lumped into a dorm room at random _shouldn't_ have forged such an ironclad friendship, but destiny arced in odd ellipses. They'd laughed together, screamed together, cursed and cheered and cried together. Team SSSN, they'd joked, a reference to the way the nameplates outside their dorm room had stacked up. More than roommates, though, they had come to trust one another implicitly, to transcend race and language and culture by way of unforeseeable fraternity.

That hadn't - _couldn't_ have - lasted. Sage had vanished for months, visiting distant family in Mauritania, beyond the reach of Skype, or even email. Scarlet had drowned himself in his research, spending countless hours in the darkest recesses of the library. Sun had found a girl who shared his taste for Hong Kong action films and spending half the weekend in bed...

Neptune kicked at the sand beneath his feet, a small spray of gritty particles erupting from the toe of his boot. ' _This was supposed to be the "Team SSSN" Eurotrip'_.

It was wrong to resent a friend's happiness, he knew, but Neptune didn't exactly have the luxury of a wide social circle to fall back on. When Sun had run out of Guangdong fish recipes to entice Blake with Neptune had breathed a wordless sigh of relief, even as he consoled and commiserated with Sun over cheap beer and old video games. Sun moved on to Ruby, and Neptune dismissed it as a rebound, his streetwise roommate having so little in common with the sweet little girl from Vancouver Island. And besides, _nobody_ was stupid enough to fool around with the one thing Yang Xiao Long guarded more jealously than her hair...

He could make out Ruby leading Sun by the hand, eagerly pointing out sites that her boyfriend took in with an easy smile. They were so effortless together it was practically mind-boggling.

The sound of lapping waves finally reached his ear, and Neptune ground to a halt. His aimless wandering had taken him right to the water's edge, to the Baie de la Seine. He normally never would've gotten so close to the murky expanse, but grouchiness and misanthropy had propelled him away from the others, like the repulsion of two negative magnets.

"Bit of a damp squid of a morning, isn't it, Nep?"

" _Gah_!" Neptune let out the startled shriek of a man who had been convinced he was utterly alone, the gentle lilt of Received Pronunciation as startling as a gunshot to his ears.

In his shocked state Neptune couldn't help but stumble into Scarlet's boots, which were standing on their own, knocking one over as he spun around in surprise.

Scarlet let out a soft _hiss_. "Try not to get sand in them, would you?"

"Sorry," Neptune muttered in apology, righting the overturned boot. His hand brushed over coarse grains, as unwelcoming as the water before him.

Unwelcoming to _Neptune_ , at least. Scarlet had discarded his footwear and rolled up the legs of his pants, having strode a few feet into the tide-soaked mud of the bay. They stood in silence for several seconds, Neptune keeping himself a conspicuous distance from the outermost reaches of the tide's lapping waves.

"Thank you for indulging me," said Scarlet, his voice little louder than the ebbing and flowing of the waters. "I know that this isn't what you had in mind for our Grand Tour of Europe, but it's somewhere I've wanted to go for some time now."

Neptune couldn't quite match the contemplative tone of his roommate. "Your grandfather _died_ here, Scarlet," he reiterated, casting his eyes up and down the dull expanse of beachhead. "How do you... why don't you _hate_ this place?"

Scarlet shrugged. "I suppose I could," he replied, sounding indifferent to the inquiry. "Not sure it would do me much good, though, would it?"

Neptune had to suppress both a snort and an eye-roll. He still shook his head, though, and folded his arms across his chest.

...

"You're thinking about it, aren't you?"

"About what?" asked Scarlet, eyebrows raising.

"' _Why is Neptune_ soooo _afraid of going in the water?_ '"

"I honestly wasn't, mate."

" _Sure_."

"Cross my heart," Scarlet swore. "I mean, I've just assumed it's like me and driving. You don't learn how when you're young and in the meantime it becomes only scarier and scarier in your mind." He shrugged.

"I know how to swim," Neptune retorted, angrily.

"Could 'ave fooled me."

Scarlet grimaced at his own joke the moment he said it, off-hand flippancy dredging up a history best left undisturbed. It was too late, of course, the memory of Weiss' twentieth birthday party too fresh in their minds not to be tripped over in conversation...

It had been Schnee Manor's first and last pool party, Weiss celebrating her Father's semi-permanent relocation to London as much as the anniversary of her birth. Yang Xiao Long, slightly uninhibited thanks to unfettered access to the Schnee wine cellar, had given Neptune a playful _shove_ into the pool he'd spent the past several hours contently gazing into. The results had been... not pretty.

Neptune had thrashed with the desperation of a drowning man, gulping in lungfuls of chlorinated water in a thoughtless panic. Scarce feet from the pool's edge he was as lost as if at sea. Only instincts instilled in Sun from lifeguarding at Ocean Beach had caused him to literally dive to the rescue, dragging his floundering roommate out of the pool.

Once the water was out of his lungs Neptune had tried to brush off his near-drowning, insinuating that he'd hit his head on the diving board a dozen-odd feet away. Nobody had said anything, of course, but the remainder of the evening had been a markedly more subdued affair...

...

"They were about _that_ far away," said Neptune, his gaze resting on a small sailboat, barely visible on the horizon. What maniac thought this morning a good one for an excursion was beyond him. "Practically in Martha's Vineyard." He took in Scarlet's non-recognition. "Island for rich people off Massachusetts," he clarified for the Brit.

Neptune's gaze returned to the sailboat, but his eyes had glazed over. "It was a quiet evening when they left. Supposed to be a fun little trip, you know, out to...to... _God_ , what were those islands called?"

He sighed, mourning how his memory of their last days together was fading, no matter how hard he struggled to preserve it.

"I could actually _see_ their boat before my Aunt took me inside. She said it was getting too windy for me to be out." He paused. "My parents were in this tiny cat-rigged sailboat, you know, not really built for bad weather. I remember thinking they were in trouble, yeah, but you know how things are when you're a kid..."

"Everyone might as well be invincible," Scarlet said, finishing what Neptune couldn't.

"Yeah."

They stared wordlessly out at the little sailboat, which seemed entirely unimpeded by the choppy waves and uncooperative winds.

"So it was somewhere around here that your grandfather died?" said Neptune, asking the question more to end the silence than out of intelligent inquiry.

Scarlet nodded. "Somewhere around here, yeah," he replied. "'Course I don't know _exactly_ where, or when, or even how. They never even found a body to send back across the Channel."

"And you're... and you're _at peace_ with that?" asked Neptune, unable to keep the note of incredulity from his voice.

His answer was a shrug. "That's not _precisely_ the term I would use," Scarlet quibbled, "...but I suppose it's not the worst. He died for a purpose."

"And everything happens for a reason, right?" replied Neptune, though sarcasm dripped from his words.

Scarlet's snort was appropriately dismissive. "Fate and destiny is all a load of spunk if you ask me. It's not like he sacrificed himself to win the war or anything like that. He was just poor sod in the wrong place at the wrong time. "

"So you're saying it was meaningless."

Neptune's words cut through the morning fog like a blade. Scarlet remained silent for several seconds, aware that Neptune's conversation was running only distantly parallel to his own.

He sat down in the sand, letting the water splash against his seated form.

"I don't think anything's ever really meaningless," he finally said, his tone that of an idle philosopher on a lazy summer's evening. "As long as it's not a tree falling in a forest with nobody around to hear it, you know? But if he lived... I wouldn't be sitting here right now, then, would I? Grandma might never have moved to London, Dad never met Mum in an East End pub, all that butterfly effect tosh. I can't say I'm _happy_ at the way history unfolded, but I'm here now, aren't I? No choice but to make the most of it?"

"It's not that simple," Neptune retorted, though the denial was reflexive, not reasoned.

"Never said it was." Scarlet patted the muddy ground beside him. "Take a seat anyways, dip your feet in the water. You're probably never going to come here again."

Off in the distance, Ruby and Sun lost themselves in each other's arms. Weiss in hand, Yang strolled the beach in a bikini, an act of sartorial defiance against the climate. Blake and Sage held a conversation of typical laconicity.

Neptune's bare heels dug into the muddy sand, toes clutching at the beach's edge like talons. The first wave rode up to his ankles, submerging his feet in cold and murky water.

Nothing dramatic happened. There was no personal revelation, no shattering of worldviews, no remaking of self or instantaneous overcoming of trauma.

Just two friends on a beach, lost to the world.

**Author's Note:**

> "Neptune-centric fic" is one of the phrases I never expected to type. So, yeah, bit of a change of pace for me. Unfamiliar characters, unfamiliar subject. Please be gentle with your reviews, for my ego is a fragile one.
> 
> Can you tell that I don't speak Cantonese? Or French? And yes, Patch Island = Vancouver Island in my head, for capital-R Reasons. I've decided I really like Red Sun, though. Team Canon IRL.
> 
> One day I will write proper yaoi, I swear. It will probably star Sun.


End file.
